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Ryan: Thank you for the quality review. From time to time, AT includes a table that shows relative performance and pricing of GPUs in AMD's and nVidia's GPU offerings. Would you include such table in this article?Reply

Those tables are typically only used in what we consider "primary" reviews.

For reviews and roundups of individual cards like this, we are less interested in how it compares to competitive cards, and more interested in how the reviewed products compare to other cards in the same product family. E.G. we've previously established how GTX 770 compares to 7970 and the like, but how do the individual 770 cards stack up?Reply

Thanks for the review Ryan. I understand your reasoning for not including wider comparisons. For me, however, I always read GPU articles with an eye to "what does this mean for me?"...specifically, how is my 7950 boost holding up. I could wish for a better memory, I could open another tab and spend a few minutes pulling up past reviews...and I could wish that round-up and capsule reviews threw in a couple old charts (no reviewer comment or analysis needed), perhaps as an addendum titled "gpu overview" or "the big picture".

Two games, one favoring AMD and one Nividia, would be great... or even a link to past charts for convenience. Anyway, great reviews...this isn't really a criticism, its just something I would like to see...Reply

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Your comments about software from MSI, Evga and Gigabyte are a little strange as there is nothing at all stopping you from using any of their overclocking software on any of the cards mentioned. I use MSI Afterburner on my other branded cards all the time, it even works on laptops. Reply

The point is that this software is part of what you're paying for when you purchase these cards. It's part of the value of the whole package. You could easily swap the heatsinks and fans, but those are still valid points to raise when reviewing the product as a whole.Reply

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EVGA also has several GTX 7xx cards with dual or even triple bioses.http://www.evga.com/articles/00767/Would also be interested in further information on whether any video cards being reviewed include a "UEFI GOP video firmware", which Windows 8 would require for installation and running in UEFI mode.Reply

"The end result being that MSI has put together a very good card that’s easily competitive with everything else we’ve seen, but without crossing the line into unofficial modifications, the EVGA’s $35 price premium is hard to justify."

I think (actually sure) that the difference between card coolers, their thermal efficiency heavily depend on the environment they are in. Open desk does not simulate any real case airflow hence you may get false rpm (lower) and noise characteristics vs in a real life in-case scenario.Reply

Gigabyte has a 4GB Windforce 3X too. Maybe these could justify another article? It makes me think I would like to see a deeper dive between these three cards plus their 4GB brothers in just one or two games but at multiple resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and something bigger) and quality settings, trying to find where clock rate and memory bandwidth tradeoff as the limiting factor. One of the games should be something that showed a difference in today's test and the other should be one that didn't.

Still, I think it is pretty clear that the 770 is a great performer especially for a small chip like the GK104. It makes me wonder what a chip like this would do if they scaled it up to GK110 size and kept it strictly a gaming chip.Reply

Fwiw, the 4gb version of the evga 770 I have also achieves these same over clocks as Ryan saw on the 2gb model, including on the memory. I run triple 1440x900=4320x900, and as several have commented, it's probably really only on those very high resolutions where the 4gb memory comes into play. In case it helps, when running BF4 with settings at mix of mostly ultra & some on high, afterburner reports VRAM usage in ~2.4gb range on most maps. Reply

It would be awesome to see a review of one of eVGA's niche cards, like the GTX770 Classified Hydro Copper. I'm running one in my system atm, and love it, but would love to see what's said about it from professional reviewers.Reply

I am just endlessly impressed with Gigabyte. The consistently offer a performance to value ratio that is either the best or among the best and they do so at very competitive prices even without discounts and sales. When their products do go on sale they're simply unbeatable. I can't wait to see them expand into more categories.Reply

8.2 Ghz is very impressive for a memory overclock. I'd love to see such speeds on Ttian or the R9 290x for the extra bandwidth. That'd get you 524 GB/s bandwidth on the R9 290x which should be very beneficial for 4k gaming. Of course this is wishful thinking as going with a wider bus often limits memory bus speeds, but one can dream right?Reply

The problem is that the wider you make the memory bus the harder it is to route the traces on the PCB to allow high-frequency operation. AMD is only shipping the R9 290X at around 5GHz memory, and you can bet that in order to save on costs they won't be using higher rated memory chips. It might take custom PCBs before different memory chips are used, and AMD isn't allowing vendors to customize the card at all at launch.Reply

You can use MSI Afterburner on any AMD/NVidia based graphics card regardless of vendor. Only thing you lose by going non-MSI non-reference board (like the Gigabyte of this roundup), is voltage control, but that is limited on these GTX 700 series cards anyway.Reply

It is interesting to see how far the custom cooling solutions (and custom PCBs) have come on video cards. I know it is nothing new and obviously marketing-driven, but nevertheless gives consumers more choices and better experiences.

Even betweein the same OEM's cooler's, I see how they "evolved." For instance, Gigabyte's WindForce had quite a few shortcomings at first - no heatsinks on memory/VRMs, fan rattling and getting worse over time, etc. It's great to see that they are learning and improving.Reply

I would love to see an expansion to the OC section of these reviews and having OC figures for the comparison cards as well (760, 780, 7970, and 7970GE). Can you or whoever is writing up the review the upcoming R9 280X also include the OC benchmarks of the 770s in the overclock section of that review?Reply

Something that would be very useful and valuable for differentiation purposes would be a card easy to clean. All of my cards get his radiators completely occluded with dust from time to time, and cleaning them is incredibely annoying.

I wish it could be as easy as trowing the radiator and fans to the dishwasher. But it never is as simple. I don't dare to wet my fans, because they are not detachable from the engines. And removing the radiator mean having silicone paste to reinstall them. Frequently I don't ever have silicone paste. I need to buy more, and that's a delay, and an impediment to clean the cards at convenient times.

Is there any chance to add an SLI of 2x GTX 760 to this round of benchmarks? This option costs less than a GTX780, but has the potential of out-performing a Titan. Therefore it would be very interesting to see how it performs in reality.Reply

Ryan, can you tell me if this GTX 770 would be a good choice to replace my very old ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT for the specific purpose of improving my Final Cut Pro editing processes? I just don't know if the graphics cards play that big a roll in the editing displays and playback for Final Cut, and if I am just fine with what I have.Reply

I'm really disappointed by the EVGA card. I currently own a 770 SC ACX. It's loud in idle (fan won't go below 1400rpm), it's pretty loud under load. Why do I even buy a custom card? For the 50MHz higher boost?They clearly forgot what a custom card is all about. You can get a silent BIOS from the support which reduces the idle fan speed to 1100rpm. Still way too loud for my taste.

Same goes for the ASUS DC2OC by the way. It's quieter in idle, but fans won't go below 1100rpm.Reply

This has helped a lot in my quest for a new GPU. I think I've settled on the Gigabyte Windforce. However, I was a little confused by the listing. To ask plainly, if I was searching for this card to purchase, what would be the difference between the "OC Windforce" and the "OC Windforce OC?" It isn't an OC Windforce card you've gone and someway re-overclocked, is it?Reply